


Dark Matter

by LavenderJam



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Asriel's Alloy, Discussions of Intercision, Experimental Theology, F/M, Lab Sex, Mad Scientists, Murder Science, Pre-Canon, Stel and the monkey are just like WTF, they are Bad People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:47:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28635738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderJam/pseuds/LavenderJam
Summary: “I want to know why you have that box,” Asriel said. He rubbed his gloves together. “Come on. Let’s go back to whatever lair you’ve constructed here and you can tell me all about it.”“No.” They stared at each other, the snow dusting their coats like icing sugar, Marisa clutching the parcel tightly to her chest. A minute passed and the monkey began to paw at her leg; he was trembling in the biting cold. Stelmaria was content, her silver fur gleaming as the snowflakes coated her in a bitter gloss.Asriel folded his arms. “You’ll freeze before I do.”(After a chance meeting in the North, Marisa shows Asriel a prototype of the separator.)
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 17
Kudos: 44





	Dark Matter

**Author's Note:**

> “Over and over again the same pattern recurs: two things that were so closely bound together that they functioned as one are split apart, and function from then on as two.” - Dæmon Voices, Philip Pullman 
> 
> “Dark matter. That’s the stuff that makes up the universe. But it doesn't interact with the things we know in the way we expect.”  
> “No, but its presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. We know it’s there. We just can’t see it.” - Luther, season one, episode one. 
> 
> “But do you remember the first experiments, when she was so keen to see them pulled apart - ” - Northern Lights, Philip Pullman 
> 
> “Come with me!” he said, urgent, powerful. “Come and work with me!”  
> “We couldn’t work together, you and I.”  
> “No? You and I could take the universe to pieces and put it together again, Marisa!” - Northern Lights, Philip Pullman

A large bronze bell clanged as Asriel entered the wooden cabin, clumps of snow scattering across the floor as he thumped his worn boots on the mat and removed his gloves. It was a bigger equipment arsenal than he’d expected to find in Trømso: the shelves made from the same pine logs as the cabin’s walls were several layers deep, and from his vantage point in the doorway he could see ice axes and rifles lining one wall, a selection of thick furs hung up on the other, and enough boots to keep his toes intact for a hundred more winters on the shelves directly before him. He grinned at Stelmaria.

“I told you I’d be able to find a decent pair of boots here.”

She rolled her eyes. “And I’ll tell you again that you still should have bought a new pair in London before we left. There’s almost nothing in this town, if you can call it that. You’re lucky we found this place.”

“Luck had nothing to with do it,” he said, picking up a shoe from the shelf and examining its sole.

She’d been instructing him to replace his old pair of sealskin boots for weeks, and had despaired when they’d set sail for Trollesund and he revealed the fraying seams and damaged woollen drawstring, to say nothing of how the scraped skin itself was almost worn through. He’d brushed off her concerns as they skirted the waves, certain that he could purchase a new pair in the port town when they docked a week later. After that mission had proved a failure, the harp seals having had a poor breeding season, a local innkeeper had directed him to Trømso, crowing about a well-stocked store nestled in the otherwise sparse village like a buried treasure. Asriel had sent his team ahead to set up their camp and taken a short detour with Stelmaria, the snow leopard glaring at him for all six of the hours they’d spent on the sled before they reached the cabin. Now, her concern melted away, and she wrapped her tail around Asriel’s leg as he perused the selection of kamiks.

“These will do,” he said, tucking the boots under his arm and looking around for the proprietor. He weaved between the shelves but could find no one. He reached up and rang the bell again with his hand.

He was just about to ring the bell for a third time when he heard a door open from behind the till, a thick Norrowegian accent reaching his ears. “Please, madam, do let me know if there’s _anything_ more I can do for you, anything at all…”

“Thank you, Einar. You’ve been most helpful, as always.”

Stelmaria growled as the familiar, lyrical voice floated into the main room of the cabin, and Asriel hardly had time to process the sound before she was standing before him, her cheeks flushed from the cold, her fur coat impeccably tailored, a large box tucked under her arm. She couldn’t have been there for long: her curls were sprinkled with snow and she was still wearing her gloves. Her eyes turned to ice as she spotted him. The monkey leapt to her shoulder and stared down at Stelmaria.

“My apologies, sir, I’ll be with you in just a moment,” the shopkeeper said, oblivious.

Asriel stared at Marisa. “What?” he said, after a beat. “ _What?”_

Surprise was etched across her face, mirroring his, but it soon melted into irritation. “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“What are _you_ doing here?”

She tilted her head towards the box. “I had a parcel to collect.”

Stelmaria growled again. “Yes, I can see that,” he said. “Why are you collecting parcels _here_ , of all the damn places on this planet you could be?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she said haughtily. The proprietor looked between them.

“You know each other?” he said, but the glare that both Marisa and Asriel sent his way had him shrinking back against the wall.

Marisa glanced at the kamiks in his hand and rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you came North without _boots_.”

He ignored her. “How much for these?” he said to the baffled shopkeeper.

“A – a thousand krone, sir,” he said.

Asriel patted his pockets, wondering if he’d left his cash buried somewhere in the sled outside, but before he could finish his thought Marisa had produced the money. “Here, Einar,” she said, smiling sweetly. “For the parcel, and the boots. And a little extra to say thank you for all your help. I do _so_ appreciate it.”

Asriel scowled at her simpering tone, caramel laced with cyanide. “Don’t take that,” he said gruffly to the other man. “My pack’s in the sled, with my wallet – ”

“Oh, Asriel, don’t be so proud,” Marisa said. “Funds are still tight, are they not?”

For a brief moment, he wanted nothing more than to choke her. Her eyes fell to his twitching fingers, and he watched a shiver roll through her torso. Stelmaria growled beneath her breath.

“Here,” she said, and pressed the money into Einar’s hand. “The next shipment should be arriving next week. I’ll return then.”

“Of course, madam,” he said, his tern-dæmon gazing at the monkey, the golden fur gleaming in the soft naphtha light of the cabin. Then his eyes brightened. “Oh, there’s just one more thing…” He began to search beneath the till.

“Shipment of what?” Asriel asked, kicking off his worn boots and lacing up the new pair.

“Never you mind,” she said, tightening her grip on the box, but her attempt at discretion was foiled by Einar, who appeared from beneath the bench with a small stack of papers. “Your receipts, madam,” he said, and Asriel had pounced and grabbed them before Marisa was able to intervene.

His neck snapped up. “Titanium?”

Marisa gave the shopkeeper such a dark look that the man’s dæmon began to quiver, covering her eyes with her white wings. Marisa snatched the papers from Asriel’s hand.

“You can read,” she said dryly. She tried to move towards the door but he grabbed her arm and held her in place.

“Why the _fuck_ are you collecting shipments of titanium in the middle of fucking nowhere?”

“Why are _you_ buying boots miles away from anywhere you might feasibly be doing research?” she hissed. He tightened his grip on her bicep.

“Are you building something?”

“Are you really brainless enough to head north without a decent pair of sealskins?”

“Demonstrably,” he said. A fleck of his saliva landed on her bottom lip and she wiped it away with her tongue. “Answer my question.”

Marisa leaned forwards, as if preparing to whisper. He turned his head slightly, angling his ear towards her mouth. “No,” she said, then pulled her arm roughly from his grasp and stalked out into the snow.

He stormed after her, blinking as a swirl of snowflakes careered into his eyes. The path that had been cleared between the snow banks was already thickening, and it was dark enough that he might have lost her already if not for the beam of the anbaric torch she was using to illuminate her path, which was dotting the ground like a little patch of sunlight. He sent the musher ahead to their lodgings for the night and jogged after her.

As soon as he reached her, she turned to him, her expression thunderous. “Absolutely not,” she snapped.

“I’ve sent my sled away,” he said. “You’ll have to take me in.”

“Or leave you out here to freeze to death.” She stopped. The flakes of falling snow were clinging to the fur lining of her hood, ringing her with frost. “This is a small town, and it’s too late to travel onwards. You’ve booked into one of the guesthouses, haven’t you? Go there. Leave me alone.”

“No. I want to know why you have that box.” He rubbed his gloves together. He could feel ice crystals already starting to encrust his eyelashes. “Come on. Let’s go back to whatever lair you’ve constructed here and you can tell me all about it.”

“No.” They stared at each other, the snow dusting their coats like icing sugar, Marisa clutching the parcel tightly to her chest. A minute passed and the monkey began to paw at her leg; he was trembling in the biting cold. Stelmaria was content, her silver fur gleaming as the snowflakes coated her in a bitter gloss.

Asriel folded his arms. “You’ll freeze before I do.”

Marisa’s foot twitched, like a child on the verge of a tantrum. Then she let out a snarl and began to walk. Asriel followed.

They trudged through the snow in silence for a while, the monkey now tucked inside Marisa’s coat, their cheeks ruddy as the wind and snow whipped against their skin. Stelmaria was taking the deepest breaths she could manage, sighing as the frigid air filled her lungs and perfused her blood.

“I thought your facility was much further north than this,” Asriel said.

Marisa said nothing. The only sound was the crunch of fresh snow compressing beneath her boots.

“What was it called?” he continued. “Bolvangar?”

She bristled. “You’ve been talking to witches, then,” she said, with a sneer.

“Among other things.” She glared at him.

It was another minute before she spoke again. “That site is very remote. It takes weeks for materials to arrive and there are… certain inputs that we must transport ourselves, at great expense. It’s simpler to work on prototypes closer to the major ports.”

“I see.”

They soon stopped before a thick metal door embedded in a dark building. Marisa punched the code into the keypad, and when the door clicked open, she tried to dart inside and shut him out. He shoved his foot into the doorway and suppressed a wince, grateful for the thick fur and robust seal skin that were all that stood between the sharp edge of the wall and his ankle. 

“ _Marisa_ ,” he growled, unimpressed, then wrenched the door open and forced his way inside, ignoring her scowl.

She hung her furs up by the door, placed her boots beneath a heated rail and flicked the anbaric switch on the wall. The cold white light blanketed the laboratory, blinding him for a second, his eyes already adjusted to the blue-black darkness of the Arctic.

The walls were lined with austere metal benches, the same grey steel as the door, and the various appliances that dotted the worktops were flush against the brickwork, wires hidden, labels clearly displayed. Glass bottles lined the shelves, filled with various transparent liquids, and a neat set of conical flasks gleamed beside them. The tray on the bench where he dumped his gloves was adorned with an array of steel instruments, scissors and tweezers and scalpels. He ran his thumb along one of the blades. 

The centrepiece of the laboratory, though, was on the other side of the room. Two identical mesh cages were almost pressed together, just a small space between them, and Asriel could see something silver glinting in the gap. The cages were encased by a metal structure, around which wires and pipes were woven. Asriel took a few steps towards the device, his mind whirring. Stelmaria and the monkey were talking quietly on the other side of the room, as far away from the cages as it was possible to be without fleeing from the laboratory into the frigid wilderness.

Marisa studied him as he fingered the wires and examined the mesh. He peered between the cages and realised that the silver glint he’d noted was a vast blade, broad and cold and vicious. “You’re cutting something,” he murmured. He tried to reach out to touch the metal, but hand was too big to slot into the gap. “Slicing it.” 

Her face remained as cool and fierce as the blade he’d just been surveying. “Clearly.”

“What?”

She raised an eyebrow, her eyes sliding to their dæmons, the proud, powerful snow leopard shivering across the room. His eyes widened. “No. _No._ ”

“The idea of separation cannot be entirely new to you.”

“Of course not,” he said indignantly. He’d heard stories of horrific accidents, human and dæmon ripped apart by waves after an ill-advised swim or sail in a storm, mountain climbers who’d fallen a hundred feet before their dæmons had a chance to leap after them, to say nothing of the witches and their rituals. But those were calamities, a brutal, unfortunate intersection of humanity and nature, or the magic of beings whose lives were fundamentally unlike his own. Nothing like this. Nothing so clinical and deliberate and scandalous.

He shook his head. “I thought the typical method was tearing, rather than cutting,” he said, and Stelmaria whined.

“It used to be,” she said, leaning against one of the benches. “A vulgar technique, which subjects rarely survived. This is much cleaner.”

He looked at the chilling machine. “They survive?”

She paused. “Some of them do. More of them will when we figure out what to do about the shock, for which a breakthrough can’t come soon enough. The screaming, Asriel, it’s so ghastly,” she said, though her eyes were glittering.

“Have you tried chloroform?” he said absentmindedly, still mesmerised by the separator, engrossed to the point that he didn’t see her write something quickly in her notebook.

He pulled back. “These cages are awfully small. No wonder people scream. It must be terribly uncomfortable to be crammed in there like that.”

Silence. Then he turned to her, the final piece of the jigsaw falling into place, the grotesque picture vivid and clear at last. “You’re separating children.”

“As always, your powers of deduction astound me.”

“This is about Dust,” he said. She flinched, and he shook his head, incredulous. “They’ve poisoned your mind,” he said fiercely, not for the first time. “All your energy focused on slicing children in two to search for _sin_ inside them. Children, Marisa!”

“Adults are already infected too deeply. You know that,” she said, through gritted teeth. “It has to be children.”

“No wonder they scream, being forced into cages and ripped in half. No wonder you can’t figure out how to prevent the shock of _that_. They must be terrified.” He glanced out of the window, the snow now coming down in sheets. “That’s why you’re here, setting up facilities in the middle of nowhere, in places where almost nothing can survive, where no one can hear them scream. They must _howl_ , mustn’t they? They must howl for their mothers, for _anyone_ to free them – ” 

“We don’t use children who are missed by their mothers,” she snapped, and both she and Asriel blinked as her words washed over them, their spines straightening, a chill leaching into their blood and making them shiver. Marisa ran a hand through her dark curls. “Excoriate me all you wish,” she continued, her tone even again, “but I’m far closer to understanding Dust than _you_ are.”

He folded his arms, his expression cool. “My work is of a different nature.”

“Oh?”

“One that doesn’t concern you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Not yet, anyway,” she said, and he felt his pulse quicken.

He considered the machine again. “How did this even occur to you?”

“Do you doubt me?” she bristled. 

“No,” he said. “I’ve just never seen or heard of anything like it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, if you ever ventured beyond the North, you might find that a great many things that seem novel to you are anything but.” He ignored her, fiddling with one of the connections as he waited for her to elaborate. “When I was travelling in Western Africa, in Benin, I was introduced to _zombis_ ,” she said. “Men who’d had their dæmons removed. They made the most amenable staff, tilled the fields day and night without complaint, and seemed completely unburdened by all the bothersome emotions that dominate our existence. At first, it was shocking, of course... but then I realised that these men were alive, healthy, working and well, but no longer accruing _Dust._ It was a revelation.” 

“Sounds vile,” he said, and then frowned. “I thought you went to Benin to research clocks?”

She blinked. “You read my book.”

“Of course I did,” he said, but before her eyes had the chance to soften he’d said: “And I can’t believe anyone published it. Sloppy methodology, poorly structured, to say nothing of the holes – nay, _craters_ – in your conclusions.”

His condescension didn’t seem to bother her, a smile still toying with her lips. “But I suppose that makes more sense now,” he continued, “if the clocks were just a cover for _this_.”

“Some people can focus on two projects at once,” she said primly. “And the research I did for this extends far beyond Benin. The Skraelings have been doing it by hand for centuries, you know, and the Church has been making little _cuts_ to preserve innocence for at least as long.”

“You’re talking about the castrati.”

“Of course. And that was sanctioned to enable _music_ , of all things, a weak, timid aim compared to _this_ , to understanding the nature of sin itself. We’ve made it so much simpler too, so much cleaner and more hygienic. It used to be barbaric. Our methods are much gentler by comparison.”

“I doubt that,” he murmured, watching her carefully, noting how _reasonable_ it all sounded falling from her sweet lips. He imagined the presentation she must have delivered to the cardinal and his bishops, old men in stale robes and blemished jewellery looking upon this woman with reverence, her words dripping with charm thick enough to obscure the malice beneath. No one would suspect that someone so glorious to behold could be capable of such cruelty. It felt almost abstract, an impossible cube, an optical illusion of which no amount of study could make sense.

He felt a sudden stab in his chest and for a moment it was impossible to look at her. He turned and began to tap his fingers against the wide pipes that surrounded the cages, scrutinising them properly for the first time. He frowned. “Is this a cooling system? In the _Arctic?”_

She nodded. “The experiments produce a truly astonishing amount of heat. We need condenser circuits and a cooling tower even here, even in the dead of winter. It was such a nuisance before we found the solution; it kept fritzing the anbaromagnetic system. We wasted so much copper, I can’t tell you.”

The mention of copper jolted his memory. “The titanium,” he said, rounding on her. “How does that fit into this degenerate picture?”

The look in her eyes was an odd mix of apprehension and pride, an expression he’d never seen on her face before. “What?” he said, the corner of his lip tugging upwards, a hint of a smile. “What is it?”

“Take a look at the blade,” she said.

It was nestled between the mesh, and he wasn’t about to put his head in one of the cages to get a better vantage point. He crouched down, placed one hand on each chamber and pressed his eye to the gap between them. The metal glinted, revealing an exquisite rainbow tarnish, a sheen he knew intimately.

“You didn’t,” he said. “ _My_ alloy?”

“It’s not _yours_ ,” she said. “You never patented the method. And I believe it was _me_ who figured out how to give it some structural integrity.”

He remembered the day well. They’d toiled away in his London laboratory for hours, sweating by the vacuum furnace until a perfect, powerful chunk of metal emerged, the first attempt that hadn’t crumbled into dust the moment he’d squeezed it between his fingers. They’d been giddy, smeared with powdered metal and titanium chloride, and then he’d laid her down in his bed and she’d asked him about the future they could have together, the power they’d possess, the universes that might quiver before them. When she’d left that evening, he’d wondered if his pleas might finally have been enough, if they contained whatever magic incantation she required to open her eyes and dare to tear the world in two with him. But she didn’t materialise on his doorstep, suitcase in hand, the next day or the day that followed or the day after that. And when they had seen each other next, they hadn’t spoken of it. In fact, they never had.

“You said yourself that it would be an extraordinary material, though you didn’t yet know how. Well, you were right. It is extraordinary, and this is how. This is what it does. It’s remarkable.”

“I want to see the blade,” he said, and she nodded. She walked over to the control panel that stood a few metres from the separator and began to flick switches and press buttons. With a crackle and a spark, the machine came to life, the blade raised by a pulley and dangling in the air before him. Both Stelmaria and the monkey whined at the sight of it.

In the cold light of the laboratory, the metal shimmered, the tarnish unique to this particular fusion of titanium and manganese gorgeous and rich. He was almost tempted to reach up and touch it, but then that thought bled into Stelmaria’s mind and she snarled.

He stalked over to Marisa, his boots slapping against the cold ground. “This is obscene,” he said. “It’s depraved. It’s _disgusting_.”

“It’s very effective,” she said, her eyes never leaving his, the faintest cloud of breath visible in the cool air as she exhaled.

There was a pause. Her eyes were glinting as she stared him down and he could see where the frost had inflamed the delicate vessels at the edges of her lips. The windows were misted with ice crystals and condensation, and the opacity made it feel like they’d been buried by an avalanche, nothing but snow and ice all around them, encasing them. It felt like they were the only two people in the world.

“How does it happen?” he said. She smiled, her eyes sparkling with sly triumph.

The golden monkey began to thrash as she plucked him from Stelmaria’s embrace and carried him over to the separator. He scratched at her hands, pulled at her neckline and hissed as she wrenched open the mesh door and hurled him inside, fastening the latch with an audible thunk. Stelmaria padded towards Asriel, her eyes locked on the monkey in horror, a stream of whimpers spooling from her mouth.

“I didn’t mean - ” Asriel started to say, but Marisa ignored him. 

“First,” Marisa said, “you place the dæmon in the right-hand chamber.” The monkey was whining and slotting his fingers between the metal spines, reaching for her.

Asriel nodded. His heart was racing.

“Tell her to stop,” Stelmaria said, her voice splintering. “Tell her to let him go.”

Asriel looked to his dæmon, and then back to Marisa, who was standing before the device. “And then?” he said. Stelmaria’s eyes widened.

“ _Asriel_ ,” she hissed. He ignored her.

“And then,” Marisa said sweetly, “you put the subject in the other side.”

Without breaking his gaze, she opened the door and eased herself into the small, ominous chamber, her head just brushing the top of the cage as she settled herself again the back wall. The blade dangled above them, shimmering and lethal, and the system sparked.

“And then,” she said, her voice rougher now. “You take that lever,” she nodded to a metal stick in front of him, with a wide handle at the top, “and pull it down.”

The monkey shrieked.

“And if I did that…”

“He and I would be torn in two. Severed forever.”

Stelmaria was skittering beside him. “Asriel,” she urged. “Asriel, stop this. You have to stop.”

His eyes were bolted to Marisa as she sat rigid in the cage. He could see her chest heaving and her eyes watering. He reached out to the lever and placed his index finger on the handle. Her breath hitched.

He applied the faintest pressure to the metal, like a toe pressing gently on the packed earth where one suspects a landmine. The lever moved a mere fraction of a millimetre and Asriel felt himself begin to tremble. 

“No!”

It was a deep voice, hoarse and pained, a resonance he hadn’t heard for some time. The cry echoed around the silent laboratory, bouncing off the chilled metal and gleaming white tiles. He looked at the golden monkey, scrabbling against the mesh door, chittering and squalling, and then he jerked away from the lever as if he’d been burned.

Marisa released a ragged breath and he could see her shaking, a tear sliding down her pale cheek as she shuddered, though a grin was still plastered on her face. He prowled over to her, flung open the door to the cage and wound his arms around her thighs, pulling her onto her back and towards him, so roughly that her head thwacked against the cool metal floor of the chamber. He removed her thick cashmere stockings and lace drawers in one swift move and then buried his head between her legs.

She moaned as he licked her, one hand grasping the mesh, her breaths turning to mist as she panted. Beside them, Stelmaria was gnashing at the latch of the other chamber, trying desperately to free the monkey from his confines, licking his fingers as they poked through the mesh in a weak attempt to soothe him.

The separator was still poised for vile destruction, and the wires sparked as Marisa writhed on the metal, her harsh rasps echoing around the room as her dæmon’s tortured shriek had done mere minutes before. Asriel shoved two fingers inside her as he slathered his tongue between her folds, and then she was shaking before him, crying out, her sweetness flooding his tongue as she came.

She was still twitching and panting when Stelmaria nipped Asriel’s dry hand and growled. “Release him,” she ordered, her voice quivering, though with rage or distress he couldn’t tell. Asriel nodded, the flood from Marisa’s orgasm already starting to crystallise in his beard, and unclipped the latch. The monkey burst free and barrelled into Stelmaria’s embrace, shivering and whimpering, and the snow leopard pressed him to her soft, white breast and licked him with her gentle tongue until his squalls waned.

When Marisa sat up, a pool of moisture glinting on the bottom of the cage, her eyes were dark and wild. She flung herself at Asriel, kissing him, wrapping her ankles behind his back as he carried her across the room and dropped her roughly onto the closest counter.

They fucked on the control panel, his face buried in her neck, his lungs filled to bursting with the familiar scent of her skin, his hands grasping her breasts through the thick wool of her dress. She ran her fingers through his hair and scratched his scalp as he thrusted into her, and while he braced himself for the sharp tug of her nails ripping his hair from its follicles, it didn’t come. She clasped his cheeks in her hands and kissed him passionately, rolling her hips on the metal as best she could to match his movements.

Their dæmons were settled by the far wall again, Stelmaria’s eyes watching the still-crackling separator with trepidation, the monkey quaking as he buried his face in her fur. Over the many years that Marisa and Asriel had found themselves repeatedly entangled like this, their dæmons had established their own patterns, some beloved, others despised. They’d held each other lovingly more times than they could remember, but they’d also brawled and snarled and evaded each other while their humans lay together nearby. This, however, was new. They’d never simply nestled together, numb to any intimacy beyond the warmth of the other dæmon’s being, the pulsing passion of their humans unable to seep into their trembling embrace, an invisible barrier between them as the two looked upon the separator, the savage device still humming with life.

Asriel was grunting into Marisa’s mouth, clutching her, holding her to him as tightly as he could manage, and even though he could feel desire coiling in his groin the force of his orgasm still took him by surprise, a series of rough groans torn from his mouth, her bare backside skirting across the buttons of the control panel as he emptied himself inside her. He panted into her neck, the soft skin slick with sweat, his arms wrapped around her ribcage as the thundering beat of his heart began to temper itself. A final jolt of pleasure shot through him and as he groaned and bucked his hips, he shunted her across the counter, and in her haste to steady herself her hand slipped against the lever and pushed it down.

The blade sliced between the empty mesh cages, but when the anbaric knife met no resistance the whole machine began to flash and crackle, the circuits overloaded. “You idiot!” Marisa cried, pushing him away, and he slid out of her as swiftly as the blade had just come down. She began to push buttons and flick switches, her dress still bunched at her waist, her inner thighs glistening. Asriel pulled her dress down, covering her, but she didn’t so much as give him a look, engrossed in the task of shutting down the separator before the sparking system caught fire. Finally, the machine died with a deep whine, but before he could speak Marisa had grabbed a small toolbox from beneath a bench and rushed over to tinker with her invention. 

Asriel placed his palms against the cool metal of the worktop and took a few deep breaths. He could hear her muttering something to her dæmon, who had begrudgingly padded over, Stelmaria close behind him, and was now handing Marisa screwdrivers and wire strippers as she examined the circuitry.

Asriel watched her for a minute, mesmerised by the precise movements of her fingers. “Can it,” he said, breaking off to catch another shallow breath, “can it be mended?”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said, tightening a screw. “I shut it down in time, so – ”

“No,” he said. “Not the machine. The _bond_ , between human and dæmon. The link you’re destroying. Can it be mended?” 

She froze. “Why would you ask that?”

“It seems the natural next question.”

She swallowed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Though we’ve never considered it, never tried. Why would we?”

“You aren’t curious at all?”

Silence hung between them. “It hadn’t occurred to me that it might be feasible,” she admitted, and he felt a sudden urge to take the golden monkey in his arms and hold him to his breast.

“And if it were feasible?”

“It isn’t. It couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

She sat back on her heels. “Bonds like that can’t be repaired. You just know it when it happens, when you see it. Some fractures are simply irreparable.” She looked him straight in the eye. “But you already know that, don’t you? We both do.”

The next sound was the door slamming as he stalked out into the night, one hand grabbing his coat from the hook, the other buried in Stelmaria’s fur and dragging her with him.

The gentle snowfall from earlier had become a ferocious blizzard in the hour that had passed. Asriel slipped on his coat as quickly as he could manage in the wind and cursed himself for leaving his gloves behind. He shoved his hands into his pockets and battled his way through the snowstorm, Stelmaria unperturbed by the icy flurry. 

He was chilled to the bone by the time he reached his lodgings, his bags neatly piled by the small bed. Stelmaria used her nose to nudge open the taps of the iron bathtub while he stripped off and plunged himself into the steaming water, wincing as the blood returned to his frozen limbs. Once he felt suitably cheered, he examined the bruises blooming on his foot like someone had blotted purple ink onto silk, cursing her for more reasons than one.

Stelmaria sat quietly while he bathed, her eyes anchored to the floor, her tail curled around herself. It wasn’t until he was dressed in two pairs of long johns and a thick woollen jacket and chewing on cured seal meat that she spoke.

“It’s barbaric, what she’s doing.”

Asriel nodded. “Yes. Yes. Undoubtably.”

“He was so afraid, locked in that cage.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Asriel said, tearing off another piece of dried blubber.

“She wasn’t. Not really.”

“You don’t think so?” 

“No. Because she knew you wouldn’t do it. That you’d never hurt her like that.”

He sighed, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of melancholy. He rubbed at his breastbone. “Or perhaps she didn’t care if I pulled that lever or not. She’s always been destructive. And they’ve had a difficult relationship for as long as we’ve known them.”

Stelmaria looked to the ground. “She would have cared,” his dæmon said quietly. “And that makes it _worse_.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “It is quite impressive, though,” Asriel said. “From a philosophical perspective. I daresay no one’s ever built anything like it before.”

Stelmaria’s ears pricked. “I wonder what happens, after,” she murmured.

“She told us,” Asriel said. “Tremendous heat. That’s why they need the cooling tower.”

“The energy that must be released for them to need apparatus like that,” Stelmaria said, shaking her head. “It must be immense.” 

“Hmm,” Asriel nodded. “And they just let it dissipate. Seems almost a waste, doesn’t it?”

The look he shared with Stelmaria made a frisson sparkle in his chest, the invisible current that flowed between him and her vivid and pulsing. She dragged his rucksack towards him and he searched its depths until he found his notebook and pencil. He began to write down everything he could remember from her laboratory: he sketched the cages, the cooling system, the rough dimensions of the blade. He recalled every scrap of their conversation that lingered in his mind, wishing he’d asked more questions and needled her for specifics. He wondered if she’d made any changes to the alloy, if she’d improved the manufacturing process again, like she’d done the last time she’d taken a look at it.

By the time he’d finished his frantic scrawling, he’d filled eight pages of the notebook. He placed it on the bedside table, stifling a yawn, and was surprised to find Stelmaria leaping to the bed and nestling into his side, her beautiful, luminous head resting on his chest. His hand gripped her fur. He could feel distress thrumming within her.

“Never, Stelmaria,” he said, holding her to him. “It’s absurd. I’d sooner die.” She nodded.

As his fingers twirled in his dæmon’s coat, his eyes slid back to the notebook, the ink still drying on the newly-filled pages, dancing with monstrous possibility. He’d lost track of all the ways their work had intertwined over the years, simmering rage somehow not the impediment to collaboration that he’d expected in the wake of their rupture, the negative space left by the other’s absence damning evidence of their enduring presence. It was often impossible to figure out whose head an idea had appeared in first. A sentence she’d muttered absentmindedly had once inspired his next paper, while she liked to rifle through his things after their latest fervent tryst, holding onto his drafts until he barged his way into her bed again and stole them back the following morning. And now his alloy was the linchpin upon which her initiative’s success rested, though without her input, many years ago, the substance might never have been robust enough to leave the walls of his laboratory, let alone retain the strength to cleave hallowed bonds in two without its own atoms fragmenting.

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, her parting words spinning through his mind, and with a sudden ferocity he realised that he disagreed, because for all that had been broken between them, the fact remained that their lives continued to interweave in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, as if a determined thread was slowly stitching the jagged edges of their matching wounds back together, crafting something marginally more whole with every stab of the needle. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, after all. Merely transformed.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this is twisted. I _know_ this is twisted. But they _are_ twisted, so this is the kind of fic they draw out of me. It is what it is. 
> 
> The idea that it was Marisa who figured out the missing piece of his alloy is not at all canon, and my fic _Organic Chemistry_ is about the day Asriel reminisces about here, where they did mad science and he thought she might really leave her husband. If you’re curious to read another science + sex fic, but with a slightly lighter tone, then that fic might suffice. 
> 
> Also, something like this - maybe less sexy, but it’s Masriel, so... - must have happened at some point, because Asriel tells Lyra all about separation and how Marisa started the Oblation Board in Northern Lights, including him having noted the burst of energy that they dismissed. He definitely knew all about it, and I doubt we need three guesses to figure out who told or showed him. Similarly, her scientists seem to be telling _her_ about how Asriel’s work has helped enhance the separator, but really, who else in that project would be bringing Asriel’s research to the table? I have to believe it was her, and that she just obscured that deliberately. 
> 
> Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now. I hope this struck an acceptable balance between Masriel backstory, experimental theology, murderous tendencies and them being perpetually horny for each other. I’d love to know what you thought, so that I know it’s not just me that finds their fucked-up dynamic so fascinating!


End file.
